are japanese anime episodes with English subtitles on a website legal if the american licensor doesn't care? like for an anime called Death Note, the licensor Viz Media send out C&D letters to websites. but for Naruto, whose episodes are super popular online and are all over the web Viz Media doesn't say anything. so since they dont say anything is it legal to have on a website? i'm a little confused here (and again i'm talking about JAPANESE episodes, not the English ones that air on TV)
As long as you do not have the explicit permission from the copyright holder then it would be illegal to use the contents. The only exception is that you created the anime yourself. Put it this way, if you actually spent countless hours and money to developed something would you honestly like someone who copy your work for free ? Well, if Viz Media does not do anything does not mean that it is okay to abuse their services. Check out http://www.viz.com/copyrights/
I think if your site just promoting the series for free, being said that you don't have any premium/paid section which require your visitors to pay to view them, then it is okay since it will be categorized as personal use.
No not really. Personal use means that you use it on your own computer and you are the only user/viewer but if you put them on the website, it would no longer be personal as it would become publicly available. That is pretty much a different thing.
yeah, this was what I was talking about all those website streaming anime episodes being illegal. They're making it publicly available for viewing off their sites as if they own the content. American licensed or not, the public use of someone else's content is illegal.